Argonne developed and/or built experiments, research reactors, or prototypes of every kind of commercial nuclear reactor in the world today, as well as many research and training reactors… Nuclear reactors designed by Argonne

Promethean Boldness

Argonne's first site was located in the Argonne Forest area of the Palos Hills Forest Preserve,
giving the lab its name. (Click the
image to see a larger photo.)

On December 2, 1942, 48 men and a lone woman gathered in a squash-racquets court
under the west stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. Their mission was to
find a way to bring a decisive end to World War II. They had joined in a great national
collaboration to develop nuclear weapons ahead of the Germans. The sense of urgency was
palpable. They knew what they were about to do would change the world—for better
or for worse. Nonetheless, their work was in the true tradition of pure science. As Robert
Oppenheimer later noted: “It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things
in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible
to find them.”

The University of Chicago's Stagg Field was the site of the first controlled, self-sustaining
nuclear chain reaction. (Click the image to see a larger photo.)

Within three years, their scientific work led to the atomic bomb. Yet, the energy they unleashed
also held great promise for peaceful uses. To harness that energy for that purpose, Argonne National
Laboratory was created in 1946. The early nuclear fission research was built upon decades of scientific
inquiry into the nature of the atom. Slowly, inexorably, its components were discovered, the mystery
of its structure unlocked, its power harnessed. Throughout Europe and America, atomic physics moved
from the realm of academic theory to applied research and development.

Until the 1930s, only two subatomic particles were known: the electron and the proton. But there
was reason to question the viability of the proton-electron nucleus. Many scientists believed the
nucleus must contain an uncharged particle to compensate for the proton charge. And the atomic
theorists were right. During the 1930s, the neutron was discovered; so were the positron and meson.
And in 1938, nuclear fission was first accomplished in Germany. The atom was split. Four years
earlier, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi had unknowingly identified the same phenomenon but
thought his "product" was new elements.

Meanwhile, Fascism and Nazism were on the rise
in Europe. Between 1933 and 1941, more than 100 refugee physicists from Germany, Italy,
Austria and Hungary fled to the United States and England. Among them were the most brilliant minds
in science, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner.

Multimedia

Argonne nuclear
pioneers: Chicago Pile 1 on YouTube (by Argonne National Laboratory) On
December 2, 1942, 49 scientists, led by Enrico Fermi, made history when Chicago
Pile 1 (CP-1) went critical and produced the world's first self-sustaining, controlled
nuclear chain reaction. Seventy years later, two of the last surviving CP-1 pioneers,
Harold Agnew and Warren Nyer, recall that historic day.